Mesh networking routes data, voice and instructions between nodes and allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around blocked paths by “hopping” from one node to another node until a successful connection is established. Even if a node collapses, or a connection is bad, the mesh network still operates whether the network is wireless, wired and software interacted. This allows an inexpensive peer network node to supply back haul services to other nodes in the same network and extend the mesh network by sharing access to a higher cost network infrastructure.
Wireless mesh networking is implemented over a wireless local area network using wireless nodes. This type of mesh network is decentralized and often operates in an ad-hoc manner. The wireless nodes operate as repeaters and transmit data from nearby wireless nodes to other peers, forming a mesh network that can span large distances. In ad-hoc networking, neighbors find another route when a node is dropped. Nodes can be either fixed or mobile, with mobile devices forming a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) known to those skilled in the art.
The mesh networks use dynamic routing capabilities. A routing algorithm ensures that data takes an appropriate and typically the fastest route to a destination. Some mobile mesh networks could include multiple fixed base stations with “cut through” high bandwidth terrestrial links operating as gateways to fixed base stations or other services, including the internet. It is possible to extend the mesh network with only a minimal base station infrastructure. There are also many different types of routing protocols that can be used in a mesh network, for example, an Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Optimized Link State Routing protocol (OLSR) and Temporally-Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA), as non-limiting examples.
Many of the mesh networks operate using a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocol. Depending on the configuration of a TDMA mesh network, end-to-end latency can be problematic. End-to-End latency is the time it takes to deliver a piece of data, typically a data packet from a source node to a destination node. Thus, end-to-end latency can be referred to as the time duration from when the packet is presented to the data communications layer of the stack at the source node to when the packet is passed up from the data communications layer of the stack at the destination node. Multi-hop, ad-hoc wireless data communications network transmit a packet among different intermediate nodes using multiple hops as it traverses the network from a source node to a destination node. In a TDMA network, the channel time slot can be allocated before the node data is transmitted. The channel transmit time is typically allocated in a recurring slot. The channel time typically is segmented into blocks as an epoch and blocks are divided into slots used by nodes to transmit data. If the data is an isochronous stream, the data can be repeatedly generated and presented at the source node for delivery to a destination node. The data is time dependent and is delivered by a specified time.
End-to-End Latency (ETEL) is one of the more important Quality of Service (QOS) parameters that are minimized for many applications. For example, interactive two-way speech has demanding quality of service ETEL requirements. Humans are extremely sensitive to transmission delays and the typical latency needs to less than 150 msec to minimize human-perceptible objections and problems, for example, talking “over” each other in long-distance satellite conversations due to satellite delay. In a “standard” TDMA allocation, the route allocations are in no particular order in the epoch and it can take multiple epochs to traverse a route.